Sapphire has really stepped up on its engineering lately, designing the industry's first graphics card based on two RV770 Pro (Radeon HD 4850) cores. While the card that has been making news for a while now, has 2GB of GDDR3 memory, with each GPU having access to 1GB of it, Sapphire has decided to carve yet another SKU, the Radeon HD 4850 X2 1GB, where each GPU has access to 512 MB of it.

The card is expected to fit comfortably between the Radeon HD 4870 1GB and the Sapphire HD 4850 2GB in the markets, while offering performance levels that justify its price. The two RV770 GPUs are clocked at 625 MHz, with memory clocked at 1,986 MHz. There is no word on its availability or pricing yet.

Surely a 4850 1GB version is a more interesting market offering. A "cheaper" 4870. (apologies if this product is already out there). To "cripple" (its all relative) a GPU to 512 then turbo boost it with 2 GPUs?? That's like a rocket strapped to a go-cart. My guess is it will WHIZZ until it needs to do some texture swapping with main memory, which may be frequent due to only 512MB "effective" GPU space, then suffer from those nasty microstutters/frame lags as graphics assets are loaded and swapped in and out of the GPU.

Actually, on EDIT, I take that back. IF you are gaming at "popular" resultions like 1680x1050 or 1600x1200 you are probably absolutely fine. You get extra ZOOM with the x2 processors.

BUT, if you are running high-res like 1920x1200 or 2560x1600 then you might suffer from the limited memory issue.

SO, net net, this is a great performance part for a "consumer" gamer, but NOT a good part for a workstation or "elitist" gamer.

Pricing will make or break this card but it's nice that Sapphire will sell this card. It fits perfect for gamers that want a good dual GPU card with good performance and less cost than the 2Gb models plus it's good for Tri-CrossfireX.

I suppose* he is refering to the fact that for a GPU with twice the power (= supposed to be able to attain twice the performance at highest settings) you need twice the memory. Games still use AFR as the multi-GPU rendering method AFAIK, so everything must be duplicated in RAM. Because this card is for those who want higher resolutions and settings with higher performance, you need more memory (per GPU) than the one you need on the single HD4850. You don't need as much as twice the memory, but you do need a lot more. I wouldn't say this 1GB X2 will be crippled compared to the 2GB one but it will surely perform quite worse IMO. That can put this card dangerously close to the HD4870 in performance, which can make it pointless.

It also might happen it's not crippled at all, which would make the 2GB variants pointless, but I don't think this will be the case. Reviews should make all this clear. Any reviews of 1GB cards around?

*Maybe too much assumtion on my part as his post does look as he thinks the regular HD4850 has 1GB of memory.

I suppose* he is refering to the fact that for a GPU with twice the power (= supposed to be able to attain twice the performance at highest settings) you need twice the memory. Games still use AFR as the multi-GPU rendering method AFAIK, so everything must be duplicated in RAM. Because this card is for those who want higher resolutions and settings with higher performance, you need more memory (per GPU) than the one you need on the single HD4850. You don't need as much as twice the memory, but you do need a lot more. I wouldn't say this 1GB X2 will be crippled compared to the 2GB one but it will surely perform quite worse IMO. That can put this card dangerously close to the HD4870 in performance, which can make it pointless.

It also might happen it's not crippled at all, which would make the 2GB variants pointless, but I don't think this will be the case. Reviews should make all this clear. Any reviews of 1GB cards around?

*Maybe too much assumtion on my part as his post does look as he thinks the regular HD4850 has 1GB of memory.

I'm waiting for these to ship with the 4870x2 stock cooler but I dont know if it will happen. I dont like this cooler and I dont really think 4 display ports is necessary. I'd rather see the extra cost of the display ports spent on a better cooler.

That's not what lemonade was saying before the edit, and I was replying to that. My post was obsolete the same second I posted it, but i's what happens when you are writing and cooking at the same time. Not at the same time, lol, but I started writing, then I went to the kitchen and some mins later I returned and sent the post.

I won't say but the HD 4850 is barely anything from an HD 4870. This is probably going to be a hot buy for users once they see the benchmarks between the HD 4850 and the HD 4870. I mean, in Half-life 2 the gap between them when Xfired on full settings is like 15fps!